While not a topic I normally write about, I felt that this story needed to be shared. Jenny Block of the Huffington Post did a great job of summing up the main issues in a few short paragraphs.

Ultimately, what’s missing here is thought. OMM is not thinking about the effect of their hatefulness on their children or the world. They are not thinking about how little sense it makes to use a loving God as an excuse for hating people. When they waste their time on issues like this, they are not thinking about the fact that there are starving children to feed and homeless families to house and impoverished countries to provide clean water for. I just wish they’d use their powers for good instead of evil.

This is about ignorance. It’s about ignorance about the LGBTQ community. It’s about ignorance about God’s love for everyone. It’s even about ignorance of simple commerce. “If they want our business, then we will not be ignored!” OMM argues. What OMM is too ignorant to see is that JCPenney wants everyone’s business; that’s why they advertise to everyone. But being a responsible corporate citizen means not giving in to bigots and not giving up on their commitment to equality. In the end, it has to be people over profit.

I’m not sure how they allowed this to be published, but in this Letter to the Editor, a man is proposing forehead tattoos in lieu of punishment for non-violent criminals.

Instead of locking them up for months, years or decades, how about applying a tattoo to the middle of their foreheads that can be removed by the state when their sentence expires. Think “The Scarlet Letter” using modern technology.

This is wrong on so many levels and most of the reader comments reflect that same opinion.

The “Why Put a Bumper Sticker on a Ferrari” article I linked to a few days ago has gone completely viral, bringing well over 25,000 readers to the UB Spectrum website. It was obvious to me from her writing that she had done very little, if any, research into the world of tattoos before writing this. Whether writing an opinion piece or an investigative report, a journalist needs to know the subject they are writing about. Lisa clearly did not. She somehow managed to degrade and insult not only tattooed people, but women in general. Not a single point she made was qualified by any research. A 5 minute conversation with a single woman with tattoos could have changed the entire tone of this article. But I digress. This post is not about Lisa’s original article, but the chaos that ensued after she wrote it.

Lisa Khoury’s article, “Why Put a Bumper Sticker on a Ferrari?“, has generated quite a response. The original article has received over 500 comments and more are rolling in every minute. There have also been quite a number of people writing responses on their own blogs and I found this one particularly well written.

Boo-hoo is right. This guy is whining and crying throughout the entire article and his writing is absolutely filled with misinformation and personal bias against tattoos. This is one of the most ridiculous pieces on tattoos that I have read in quite a long time.